Nereid

Nereid, third largest known moon of Neptune and the second to be discovered. It was detected photographically by the Dutch American astronomer Gerard P. Kuiper in 1949. It is named after the numerous daughters, called Nereids, of the sea god Nereus in Greek mythology.

Nereid has a diameter of about 340 km (210 miles). It revolves around Neptune with a period of just over 360 days in a highly elliptical orbit—the most eccentric of any known moon—that is inclined by more than 7° to the planet’s equator. Its mean distance from Neptune is 5,513,400 km (3,425,900 miles), which is about 15 times farther from Neptune than the next closest known moon, Triton. Nereid is exceedingly faint, making observations with even the largest Earth-based telescopes very difficult. Thus, little is known about it, but reflectivity data returned by the U.S. Voyager 2 space probe in 1989 suggest a surface composition of ices and silicates. Nereid’s odd orbit supports the hypothesis that its sibling Triton is an object that was captured by Neptune’s gravity and whose billion-year-long “settling-in” process severely disrupted Neptune’s original system of moons. On the other hand, Nereid itself may be a captured object that formed elsewhere in the solar system.

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third most massive planet of the solar system and the eighth and outermost planet from the Sun. Because of its great distance from Earth, it cannot be seen with the unaided eye. With a small telescope, it appears as a tiny, faint blue-green disk. It is designated by the symbol ♆.

largest of Neptune ’s moons, whose unusual orbital characteristics suggest that it formed elsewhere in the solar system and was later captured by Neptune. It was discovered by the English astronomer William Lassell in October 1846, only a few weeks after the discovery of Neptune itself....